10 Things to Consider When Building Enterprise Apps

13 October 2017

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Enterprise mobile apps have been experiencing a period of rapid acceleration in recent years. This phenomenon is driven by many companies embracing enterprise apps as tools to boost productivity while saving money.

In fact, it’s an efficient and effective way to integrate all aspects of a business’ processes and operations like the following:

This makes it important to get it right the first time to ensure that you build apps that effectively engage with your employees.

So how does one achieve this? Here are 10 things to consider when building enterprise mobile apps.

1. Know your audience

When you build apps for the commercial market, knowing the end-user inside and out is vital to the application’s success. The same rules apply when creating apps for enterprises.

This means that you have to talk to the employees to better understand the culture of departments and ascertain what they actually need. While you might already have a good idea, if you don’t talk to the people who will actually use it, you might miss out on little nuances that can make an employee’s life a lot easier.

2. What about the platform?

You have to think about what platform to build your app on as the modern digital workplace has staff using an average of three devices on a daily basis. Furthermore, the rise of wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to double that number.

If your employees are using multiple platforms, the safest bet is to build a web-based application as it can be used across devices (regardless of the operating system or platform). It will also save you time and money as you won’t have to build apps specific to each platform.

3. Keep it simple

Don’t overdo it, don’t try to be everything to everyone. The best approach here is to identify the minimum viable product (MVP) right from the beginning.

When you strip down functionality and then test and adapt based on feedback, you have a better chance at building something that will make a positive impact.

4. Avoid total reliance on built-in security features

Security is a critical component of enterprise apps, as a result, you should be aware that even iOS is vulnerable to cyber attacks. While Android is more adaptable because it’s based on C++, nothing is safe in the digital age.

Right from the beginning, developers need to start thinking about incorporating additional security features to enhance enterprise app security. Furthermore, adding multiple level authentication can also go a long way in keeping your enterprise mobile app, secure.

5. What about the backend?

You will also need to think about the backend and ask questions like the following:

Will the app need to access real-time information or share data between users?

Will it need to access existing data or systems?

Do they already have APIs that can be utilized?

6. Prevent the insecure transmission of data

When data is being transmitted, encryption becomes vital in keeping that information secure. This means that you should incorporate the best encryption methods to ensure that transmitted data is protected consistently.

You should also take it a step further and limit data cashing vulnerabilities. Cashed data can be easily accessed by hackers, so developers should make a conscious effort to limit data cashing and its vulnerabilities.

One way to do this is to provide passwords to use the app as this can help you also ensure that data is naturally erased off the complete cashed data each time the enterprise application is restarted.

7. What about its management capabilities?

Once the app has been successfully deployed, you will also need to manage it effectively. To achieve this, you must ensure that app management tools are built into them during the development cycle.

8. How do you plan to measure the app’s success?

Once your app is live, you will need to keep track of how it’s being adopted and used to measure its success. To get a good idea, you can look at adoption and retention, how the app reduces internal processes, and how it boosts productivity.

You can also look at things like how the enterprise app reduces paper costs. Furthermore, you can also see if it cuts down printing costs across the organization.

9. How will you encourage adoption?

Once the app is live, you also need to ensure that employees are going to utilize it. But how are you going to achieve it?

Right from the planning stages, you have to discuss this point with all stakeholders. If the application isn’t adopted and utilized across the company, this whole exercise would end up being a total waste of time and resources.

10. Budget for the longterm

The work doesn’t stop once the app has been built and released. So when you’re preparing the budget, plan for multiple releases.

What’s more, keep in mind that end-user expectations, business opportunities, and benefits will quickly evolve once employees start using it. As a result, planning ahead of time is key to ensure that your enterprise application keeps pace with rapidly evolving business requirements.

Andrew is our IT storyteller and copywriter. His current undertaking is big data analytics and CSS as well as digital design and branding.
He is a contributor to various publications with a focus on new technology and marketing.

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